Question

Read the excerpt from song, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” Once I built a railroad, made it run, Made it race against time. Once I built a railroad, Now it's done— Which idea is conveyed in the excerpt?
1.The speaker does not want to build rails anymore.
2.All the necessary railroad tracks have been completed.
3.The American railroads are the fastest in the world.
4.The speaker used to have work, but now there isn’t any.

Answer 1

Answer:

Number 4 would be the best answer.

Explanation:

Passing through each option, from a deductible, logical perspective:

• Number 3 cannot be concluded from the excerpt given.
• Number 1  could maybe be a possible answer, but can be dropped aside due to the fact that the speaker implies a certain level of pride to his statement, when he says that he has made the railroad 'race against time'. Hence, he would probably still want to keep building them!
• Number 2 is the one that is maybe best confused. As the conclusion 'Now it's done!' could very much either mean that all railroads have been completed, or that he hasn't found work anymore. This can be clarified by considering that he's talking about a railroad, and that his whole speech has a certain emotional, almost poethical appeal to it. So the main point here isn't the general need for railroads, but rather the speaker's feelings and aflictions.